the busy student's guide to project blogging

So, your professor has said those awful, fateful words: “You should have a project blog.” While all the cool kids are tweeting their thoughts, you’ve been shouldered with this ponderous blog; worse, you have no idea what to write in it, or who is going to read it.

Fear not! This quick guide (written primarily for students at Allegheny College who have been encouraged to blog as part of project work in the Department of Computer Science) will give you some context for:

1. Why blog?
2. What to blog?
3. When to blog?
4. Who will read your blog?
5. How to blog?

A quick search of the ‘net did not turn up a similar guide for students, so it is my hope that this is a useful resource. If you’re a student getting started blogging and are looking for a few pointers, read on.

Why blog?

Your professor suggested you maintain a blog for all the reasons mentioned in this document, plus a few relating to the fact that your professor is lazy. First off, your professor would like to know what you’re up to, and would most like to see those notes come by in their RSS reader (wiki). Second, your prof wants other people around the world to be able to keep track of the awesome projects you’re working on, and RSS is the little XML file that makes it all possible. You’ll want to use an RSS reader, too, but all in good time. This is a guide to writing blogs, not reading blogs.

Second, your prof wants your work to be visible to the world. This is because your prof is a marketing genius. Using an RSS aggregator (wiki), your professor is going to link your writing in with other students, and tell all his/her friends about what awesome stuff you’re doing.

Now, you can probably infer how this blogging thing is good for you. The most important thing is that your blog provides a way for you to capture your thoughts, link to inspirational/informational resources, and get feedback from others in your community of practice (wiki). It’s like a lab notebook, but you can embed images and video really easily, and other people can help fill in the blanks when you get stuck.

What to blog?

You can write anything you want in your blog, but you should probably think about the fact that Google and the Internet Archive have long memories. Also, someday, a potential employer might read what you have to write.

HOLYCOWWHATDIDTHECRAZYPROFGETMEINTOTHISTIME?!?!

Your blog is your space. You can write about your cats, or other people’s cats, or even repost awesome videos about cats from YouTube. For example, I’m a fan of Keyboard Cat:

You might write about politics, the media, music, food, or any number of other things on your weblog. You should probably sneak the occasional post in about your project, though. With regards to your project, you should write about your brainstorms, your explorations and experiments, any reading that you do, responses to other people’s posts, and successes you have along the way along with mistakes and dead-ends that you explore.

Throughout all of this, don’t be afraid of the hyperlink! When you read something useful, link to it! When you are inspired by someone else’s blog, link to it! This will be valuable to you later (when you go looking back at your own writing), as well as help your reader gain valuable context. Linklinklink!

To help your prof keep track of what you’re writing about any given day, you’ll want to use the tagging feature of your blogging software to make sure that you keep videos of Keyboard Cat in their place. For example, you might tag posts about cats as “lolz”. When you’re brainstorming new ideas, you might tag new ideas as “brainstorms”. When you’re writing about things that tripped you up, that you don’t want other people to discover the hard way, you might tag mistakes as “oops”. And you can give lots of tags to a single post, so one post might end up in several categories. For example, when I write a post about using the Arduino and the Transterpreter, I end up tagging it as “computing,plumbing,opensource,arduino,transterpreter”. Sometimes I mix in other tags… I’m not very consistent, really, but I try.

Ultimately, if your blog is specifically about a project, then keeping it “on message” will probably make the people reading it happier. However, it is your blog, and you should use that space however you see fit.

When to blog?

You should update your blog when you have things to say. If you’ve finished reading a blog post, web page, article, paragraph, chapter, or book that inspired you in some way, capture your thoughts! They might not be refined, but you can say that in your post:

“I just finished reading One Fish, Two Fish, and I realized that Dr. Seuss was totally talking about power management for embedded devices! These ideas are a bit raw, but here we go…”

In short, use your blog to capture thoughts that are in-progress, or perhaps to capture things you’ve been mulling over for some time.

Reindeer Cat

But also remember: your blog is more than text! Capture images, video, and other media about your work whenever you can. Human beings are highly visual creatures, and the more pictures and video you can work in about your work, the better. Drawing diagrams forces you to organize your thoughts… sketch them on paper and scan them in! Or, just snap a picture with your cell phone camera. In short, don’t get hung up on things being perfect—just get the idea out there.

Oh, and remember: if you’re over 21, and you consume beverages of an adult nature, don’t blog when you’re drunk. It’s always a bad idea. Especially in light of the question…

Who will read your blog?

Your prof is going to ask you to designate one of your tags as the tag that gets fed into the aggregator. If you’re blogging a senior comprehensive project, then you might use the tag “comp” for everything that is related to your comp. These posts will get pulled into an aggregator, and potentially be read by your classmates, other faculty at your College, and possibly people around the world.

If your work uses tools that are part of a larger, open community (for example, if it uses the Arduino, or involves working with open source software like the Mozilla Project), then it is possible that people in that community will be following your work. This is a great, great thing! When a community starts paying attention, it means people think what you’re doing is interesting, and they might even begin suggesting new ideas that you had never considered. Never underestimate the power of an engaged community.

Thinking forward, potential employers may find what you’re writing. They might find it after you’re done with your project (perhaps because you included mention of your blog in your resume), or they might find your writing before you’ve even met them! Perhaps, because your work is awesome, they decide that they need to hire you. Mind you, this isn’t exactly common (I’m selling bridges in Brooklyn over on my own weblog if you’re interested), but the fact remains: you’re demonstrating your ability to communicate in a concrete, public way.

How to blog?

Some people (like me) use a native application for blogging. For example, on the Mac I use Ecto. Under Windows, I’ve used w.bloggar in the past. Some people use the web-based interface that comes as part of their blog (eg. the Javascript-based editor in WordPress). At the end of the day, you should choose the tools that work for you, and let you get the text out as easily as possible.

That’s it!

There is either nothing more to say, or everything to say. In the case of the former, I should stop writing, and you should start. In the case of the latter, you should start writing. So, either way, its time to get started. Write what you think, in your own voice, and you’ll be part of creating a more informative, interesting World Wide Web.

Now go!

Last Update

Suggestions for improving this post are always welcome. This post was last updated on July 27, 2009, 17:23 GMT-5.